DLR participates in N.ERGHY, the new European research association on hydrogen and fuel cells

17 April 2008

DLR’s HYDROSOL project in Almería

The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) participates enthusiastically in the newly founded association N.ERGHY (New European Research Grouping on Fuel Cells and Hydrogen). N.ERGHY has recently been founded in Brussels, and together with the European Commission and an industry grouping forms part of the "Joint Technology Initiative for Hydrogen and Fuel Cells" (JTI), which has its aim the rapid development and deployment of hydrogen production and hydrogen application technologies.

For the next five years, the JTI has a budget of 940 million euro at its disposal, with the industry and the European Commission each providing half of the total sum. The establishment of the JTI entails that the research themes hydrogen and fuel cells within the EU's research framework programme are organised exclusively through the JTI. N.ERGHY's essential tasks include defining themes from the research and development areas to be elaborated and worked on. So far, 42 European research institutions and universities have joined N.ERGHY.

One of the main aims of hydrogen research is to develop, within the next ten years, the required technologies and to make them marketable, and then to gradually develop a viable hydrogen economy in Europe - the scenarios used have time horizons of up to 2050. DLR is already working intensively on research and development concerning fuel cells and hydrogen. In late March, a 100-kilowatt reactor for producing hydrogen through water splitting using solar energy was inaugurated at the Plataforma Solar de Almería (Spain) as part of the HYDROSOL project.

As N.ERGHY Executive Board member, Dr Christian Sattler of the DLR Institute of Technical Thermodynamics is responsible for the fields of hydrogen production and hydrogen storage. Moreover, the DLR's Programme Directorate Energy undertakes the N.ERGHY secretariat and makes additional staff resources available for this purpose.